What is the DLDP?
ADATS implements a DLDP from the 3rd or 4th year of Coolie Sangha building. Labour capital is made available for each CSU to collectively work on their patches of dry land for 100 days every year. These person-days are divided according to land holding and the condition of each patch of land. The entire CSU then descends on each holding to do various labour intensive works from March to June every year.
They split themselves into work gangs and descended on each person's holding to do labour intensive works. One person from each Member family go to work. Each land owner decide on the actual S&WC work needed on her or his land. ADATS Staff give technical advice and monitor the actual works. After that, Accounts Staff pay DLDP wages to the actual persons who work on the lands - i.e. the land owner does not receive any direct monetary benefit.
Soil & Water Conservation Works
For the first 3-4 years, land is cleared of pebbles and boulders, and Soil & Water Conservation Works like stone contour bunding, ravine and gully check, diversion channels, etc. are taken up. Trees are planted on the bunds, and shrubs and grasses are allowed to grow on them.
These S&WC Works are once again implemented, after a gap of 2-3 years, in order to tackle the new contours of erosion that would, in the meantime, have chequered the terrain.
In this manner, over a period of about 8 years, all the Coolie lands are cleared, levelled and bunded. Rain water is retained for a moment, moisture in the soil is increased, and soil erosion prevented. This makes the holdings cultivable, and yields as well as holdings dramatically increase.
Investments
The DLDP was started in 1986. Over the past 20 years (not every village implemented DLDP works every single year), Rs 93,785,967 worth of Soil & Water Conservation Works have been carried out on a total of 71,544 acres of Coolie owned lands.
| Work Done | ||||||||
| 16,284 acres | 23% | 1 Year Work Done | Rs 7,327,854 | |||||
| 18,779 acres | 26% | 2 Years Work Done | Rs 16,901,257 | |||||
| 14,850 acres | 21% | 3 Years Work Done | Rs 20,047,297 | |||||
| 9,295 acres | 13% | 4 Years Work Done | Rs 16,730,496 | |||||
| 5,972 acres | 8% | 5 Years Work Done | Rs 13,437,540 | |||||
| 3,386 acres | 5% | 6 Years Work Done | Rs 9,142,416 | |||||
| 1,726 acres | 2% | 7 Years Work Done | Rs 5,436,301 | |||||
| 838 acres | 1% | 8 Years Work Done | Rs 3,016,692 | |||||
| 276 acres | - | 9 Years Work Done | Rs 1,119,217 | |||||
| 122 acres | - | 10 Years Work Done | Rs 560,200 | |||||
| 16 acres | - | 11 Years Work Done | Rs 79,695 | |||||
| 71,544 acres | 100% | Rs 93,785,967 | ||||||
Land Surveys
The established practice in Coolie Sangha building is that as soon as a Coolie family joins the village CSU, all their landholdings are immediately surveyed and entered into the database. This data includes the extent in acres, title in whose name the land stands, source of irrigation, gradient, quality of contour bunds, number of years of S&WC works already carried out on the holding, and an estimate of the number of years of further work needed.
As and when DLDP works are implemented on particular holdings, the number of years of work done is increased by 1, and the number of years needed correspondingly reduced. Once every few years, when the crops are on the fields, the reworked data is taken to the village where all the Members together visit each field to verify that the information is correct.
ADATS and the Coolie Sangha need to implement an additional Rs 34,421,115 worth of S&WC works on 41,585 acres of Coolie owned lands over the next 5 years.
15,160 acres (i.e. 36% of Coolie owned lands) are completely cleared of shrubs and boulders, contour bunded and levelled, and another 6,648 acres (16%) need just 1 more year of labour investment. Therefore, 52% of Coolie holdings have come on par with those owned by middle peasant farmers in terms of yield as well as value.
| S&WC Works Needed | ||||||||
| 15,160 acres | 36% | No Works Needed | ||||||
| 6,648 acres | 16% | 1 Year Work Needed | Rs 3,324,245 | |||||
| 7,328 acres | 18% | 2 Years Work Needed | Rs 7,328,200 | |||||
| 5,485 acres | 13% | 3 Years Work Needed | Rs 8,227,920 | |||||
| 3,735 acres | 9% | 4 Years Work Needed | Rs 7,470,500 | |||||
| 3,228 acres | 8% | 5 Years Work Needed | Rs 8,070,250 | |||||
| 41,585 acres | Rs 34,421,115 | |||||||
Actual Works Done
The DLDP is a pluralistic programme comprising a whole range of indigenously conceived Soil & Water Conservation (S&WC) measures. Each individual land owner decides on the type of labour input needed on each separate field. One cannot visit just a couple of villages and claim to have seen it all. The variance and variety never fail to invite awe and surprise. They are invariably huger than what we normally visualise human labour as capable of. The collective output of the labour of 20-25 determined persons in a work gang is never a simple arithmetic of their individual muscle power. They literally move mountains, magically converting marginal lands into productive fields.
Under such circumstances it is difficult to describe DLDP works even under the 13 broad categories that we give below.
| Description | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | Total | unit | ||
| New Stone Contour Bunds | 196,853 | 327,550 | 235,969 | 250,143 | 1,010,515 | mtr | ||
| Strengthen Existing Bunds | 19,952 | 26,850 | 34,894 | 38,478 | 120,174 | mtr | ||
| Ravine & Gully Check | 234 | 1,323 | 435 | 410 | 2,402 | |||
| Clear Shrubs & Boulders | 2,032 | 2,948 | 3,743 | 2,053 | 10,775 | ac | ||
| Field Bunds | 32,750 | 68,773 | 51,703 | 27,538 | 180,764 | mtr | ||
| Retention Walls (Kanji) | 17,236 | 34,958 | 38,805 | 38,775 | 129,774 | mtr | ||
| Diversion Channels | 24,784 | 13,122 | 10,879 | 13,512 | 62,297 | mtr | ||
| Cattle Walls | 1,291 | 5,268 | 9,254 | 7,822 | 23,635 | mtr | ||
| Deepen Open Wells | 13 | 47 | 31 | 29 | 120 | |||
| Farm Ponds | 17 | 10 | 36 | 12 | 75 | |||
| Pit for trees | - | - | 4 | 84 | 88 | ac | ||
| Paths & Roads | 548 | 520 | 280 | 849 | 2,197 | mtr | ||
| Wasted Works | - | 21 | 12 | 4 | 37 | ac | ||
Allied Activities
The DLDP also includes Silt Hauling onto Coolie lands from the beds of irrigation tanks, Compost Making, Seed Treatment, Planting Trees, promoting Kitchen Gardens, training women masons to build Smokeless Chullas (fuel efficient wood stoves), assisting sweeper women to set up Vermicompost Units to make manure from earthworms, and a host of other activities.
Objectives
The initial objective of the DLDP is to enable agricultural labourers to cultivate their scattered patches and become Subsistence Farmers.
The further objective is to shift from subsistence to Sustainable Land Use Practices.
Besides developing agriculture, the DLDP has had an important socio-political impact as well. It has brought land based exploitation to the forefront and settled many disputes between the Coolies and Ryots, it has enhanced a functional unity and destroyed caste feelings within the CSUs, it has raised peasant wages in the region, and ensured equal wages for women and men.
Nature of the DLDP
Ajit Mani of Intervention (India) Pvt. Ltd. facilitated a Participatory Impact Assessment of the DLDP in September 2003. This is what he had to say on the link between the Dry Land Development Programme and other Coolie Sangha building efforts:
“The DLDP is a livelihood programme that offers fair odds to Coolies to acquire self-respect and dignity in terms of their own self-concept and worldview. The DLDP is an organ of the Coolie Sangha, which provides an identity and mantle of security to individual Coolies, particularly women.
“In a dramatic turn, the Coolies’ subsistence agriculture, which was a struggle against oppressive feudal control, has now become a struggle against unpredictable weather conditions. The analysis of rainfall in Chintamani has highlighted the uncertainty faced by Coolies, and suggested that DLDP is less about managing agriculture and more about managing risk. This is the reason why Food Security assumes such importance as the Goal of the DLDP.
“It is also an organization-building programme, which relies on “Functional Unity” and mutual support to provide sustainable mechanisms and institutions required for self-governance.
“The DLDP, of course was powered not only by the programme funding, but also the discipline and organizational support of the Coolie Sangha.
“The Coolie Sangha has been able to rally its members around the twin phenomena of individual benefits (creation of income generating assets, self-respect, and freedom from the clutches of feudal overlords) and collective benefits (provision of labour to work on each others’ plots, group identity and pride; and economic and political power.)”
ADATS involved in Withdrawn CSUs
ADATS paid Agriculturists and DLDP Field Workers work full time in this programme. Since the DLDP is taken up only towards the end of the Coolie Sangha Formalisation phase (i.e. 4-5 years after starting Coolie Sangha building operations in a village), many of these activities are implemented in the independent CSUs, after the formal withdrawal of ADATS.